B-physics on the grid: a PhD student’s perspective

This time, Serena Oggero, a PhD student at NIKHEF (The Netherlands), gives us a first-person acoount of what is it like to use grid computing. The case study - B-physics on the grid: the view from the front - describes Serena's research at the LHCb and the role the grid plays.

Here is how it starts:

If you ask “hey man, shall we go for a beer later?,” how many of your friends reply with something like: “maybe tomorrow, I really have to baby-sit my ntuples tonight”?

Welcome to the happy and slightly geeky particle physics community! Happy, because I think we are a species of truly fortunate people, despite our constant scepticism and restlessness. And most of us were already slightly geeky anyway, even before starting to baby-sit ntuples. [continue reading...]